


I will walk down to the end with you

by outboxed (fallencrest)



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Music, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-14
Updated: 2014-06-14
Packaged: 2018-02-04 15:05:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1783351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallencrest/pseuds/outboxed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles is an indie folk musician and he writes their life together into a hundred different songs. Erik isn't a part of that life anymore, he knows, but he can't resist going to see Charles one night anyway, for old times' sake and because Charles still means more to him than he can say. He intends to slip out afterwards without speaking to anyone but something in Charles' performance changes his mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I will walk down to the end with you

The venue is kind of a dive, Erik thinks, as he heads down the steps into the basement. But, then again, he’s become kind of unaccustomed to tour life since he got himself a more dull and respectable job. It doesn’t often happen that he and Charles were in the same country these days, let alone the same state, the same county. So he’s come to see Charles play, just for old times’ sake. 

A smile breaks, unbidden, across his face this moment he hears the sound of Charles’ acoustic guitar and his voice wailing out a line about a kid he’d met straight out of prison. _Alex_ , Erik thinks, _Alex’s song_ and he smiles even wider at that.

Charles hasn’t changed, he sees. He’s stood up there on the stage with just his acoustic guitar and his vocal chords. He does some gigs with a band, Erik knows, but tonight Charles is doing what he prefers, a smaller venue and a smaller set-up. It’s just Charles, his guitar, and about 500 people packed into way too small a venue.

Erik is relieved that Charles doesn’t look up and see him as he joins the back of the crowd. He hadn’t told Charles he was coming - it had been so long and it seemed sort of foolish, paying him a visit like this. Besides, he wanted to see Charles just as he was, no shields, no barriers, no set-list alterations. 

Charles had written a lot of songs about him, back in the days when he and Charles were a package deal: inseparable despite all their differences. And he’d written a lot of songs after. _Shit,_ Erik thinks, _he’s playing one now._

Charles normally does intros for songs when he plays (“this is a song about my mother” or “here’s the story of a boy I met in college”) but he doesn’t introduce this one. He just starts to play. 

It's a simple song, quiet and sad, and about half of the crowd join in, singing along. “You were my lover, you were my best friend. I couldn’t save you but could you save yourself?” 

It sounds like an accusation and it hurts but then he looks at Charles and sees something he hadn’t expected. It was true that, when he’d heard the song on the album for the first time, it had sounded more impassioned than it did now but up there, here and now, Charles doesn’t look like he feels it at all. He raises his voice a little for the chorus but there’s no malice in it, no passion. 

_There’s_ always _passion with Charles,_ Erik thinks. _He feels everything._ But he doesn’t seem to feel the words he's singing now, not the way he normally does. 

No-one in the crowd seems to notice. No-one sees how Charles is strumming out the chords like it's no more than an automatic motion. Erik’s breath catches and he lets himself wonder, for the first time, whether Charles might possibly be able to forgive him. 

Charles finishes and looks down at the ground. He seems mournful all of a sudden. 

He clears his throat, switches out his guitars and says, “This is a new song. It’s about a future I can’t stop hoping for.”

When Charles plays the opening chords, the crowd falls silent. They don’t join in when Charles starts to sing because, it would seem, Charles hasn‘t played this song before or, at least, it hasn't leaked onto Youtube, if he has. 

“I leave the porch light on. I think of you,” Charles sings, subdued but with that intense feeling that makes it sound as though he has a lump in his throat, “If you don’t come home someday, I don’t know what I’m gonna do.” A pause, a few notes, “I’ve waited six years. I’ll wait seventeen more. All I ever wanted was you back at my door.” 

Erik’s breath catches at six years and he can barely breathe for the rest of the song. It’s not a sad song or it isn’t meant to be. It’s mid-tempo. Probably, Erik thinks, it’ll be one of the most popular tracks on Charles’ next album. But as he repeats the chorus one last time, Erik thinks he sees a tear on Charles’ face. 

The crowd is silent, still, staring up at Charles and Erik stares too and feels grateful for the stage lights which he knows make it near impossible for Charles to make out faces in the crowd. 

Charles leaves the stage after the song and Erik isn’t sure if that was the planned end to the set or not but, either way, Charles comes back for encores and plays the songs that everyone knows. They’re mostly numbers from his third album, the one about his childhood, his step-father, but he plays one more from his days with Erik - the one about Angel, the dancer, and how she couldn’t escape.

At the end of the set, Erik is surprised to find himself pushing his way to the front of the crowd. 

Charles had announced “this is the last song” before he’d started to play ‘Broken Wings’ and Erik shoulders his way through at around its midpoint. He knows Charles will see him and is half scared of how he might react. 

_That damn song,_ Erik thinks, _what if it isn’t even—_ and he stops thinking because Charles just fumbled the chord change and Erik is sure he’s just started singing the second verse again instead of the fourth and Charles meets his eye as Erik makes himself a space up against the barrier and Charles keeps singing but he sounds less sure now. For the second time tonight, Charles sounds like he doesn’t mean what he’s singing. 

Charles raises his eyes as he sings the final verse, having skipped the fourth verse entirely and replaced it with the repeated second - causing much confusion in the crowd. Charles sings the whole of the final verse to the ceiling and mostly manages to sound like he means it but, when he looks down again at the end of the song, he doesn’t let the solemn mood of it linger. He smiles this uncontrollable, genuine smile - the smile he used to give Erik when one of them came up with a brilliant (terrible) idea. 

“Thank you all for coming tonight,” Charles says, looking at Erik, “It’s been phenomenal. Without you I wouldn’t be here and I owe it all to you.” He raises his eyes and says, a little self-consciously, “I’m sure you all know about the merch table but my tour manager will kill me if I don’t remind you. Have a fantastic night and I hope you enjoyed the show half as much as I did. Really, you’re amazing.” 

Erik watches as Charles lifts his acoustic guitar way over his head to escape from the strap - doing it rather less elegantly than usual, he notes - and he waits to see what Charles will do next. There are several options, as far as he can see. Charles could hop down off the stage and talk to him here and now, he could make an announcement asking Erik to come backstage or, Erik thinks, he could just walk away. 

Charles, after wavering for a moment, does something which is between the first and second options. As the rest of the crowd leaves, he moves to the front of the stage, crouches down and gestures to Erik to come. Erik frowns, unsure whether Charles expects him to just vault the barrier or— but then Charles says “Ask Scott. He‘ll let you through.”

When Erik eventually finds Scott - who’s actually over at the side of the stage near the merch table - it seems for a moment as though he’s not going to be allowed backstage. Scott makes a face which Erik thinks might be observed as a frown - if his eyes weren’t concealed behind his sunglasses - but he's cut off before he can object to Erik's attempted entry by the appearance of Charles at his side. Some of the group of fans milling around the merch table spot him but, thankfully, none of them actually make the move to invade Charles’ personal space. 

Charles is smiling at Erik but still looking at him as though he’s not sure he’s real. Perhaps because of the fans or perhaps because the conversation they’re about to have is best conducted in private, Charles turns away then and heads for the stage door which, it turns out, is just a couple of feet away. 

Erik follows and, once the door is shut behind them, Charles stops in the corridor and just stares again. “Erik, I-” he begins, and he stares at Erik wide-eyed for a good few seconds before he steps right in close and kisses Erik. 

He pulls away when Erik fails to react to the kiss and says, “Sorry, I’m sorry, I just-”

“No, Charles, I-” Erik says and then realises that he has no idea what he’s going to say. He’d come here tonight to see Charles, to see that he was still alive, still Charles. He’d come expecting to see Charles bitter and heartbroken and resilient, maybe, but not— well, he’d never thought. It had seemed impossible that Charles would ever imagine they could be reconciled after— well— 

Charles is looking at him like that day on the beach all over again and Erik forgets about words and just kisses Charles instead. He slides one hand to the small of Charles’ back, between his blazer and his button-down shirt and guides him backwards until he's up against the wall. 

*

Two weeks later, Charles is playing a new song about Erik to a small crowd in a bar in Richardson, Texas. It is untitled, unfinished, and a little too honest even by his standards, he thinks.

Raven hears it from where she’s manning the merch table like the amazing tour manager she is and she ducks outside to call Erik. “You had better not break his heart this time, Lehnsherr, I’m fucking warning you. I will rip your heart out myself with my bare fist—”

“I won’t. I promise, Raven, I—” Erik says, down the line, voice sounding rough but earnest. Then, with a change of tone, he says “Oh, and, by the way, I’m in Germany right now to close an enormous distribution deal and, whilst it probably doesn’t bother you that you’ve just woken me up at 3am, I do worry about your phone bill.”

“My brother’s heart is worth more than my international call rate, you douche. You’d better fucking make this work and I can’t believe he didn’t even _tell_ me—”

“Wait? He didn’t tell you then—”

“He wrote another fucking song.” There is a pause in which Erik remembers the other new song, the one which had made him show himself that night, in spite of everything, when he’d thought before then that Charles would never speak to him again, let alone— 

“Look,” Raven continues, “just, don’t break his heart, okay?”

“Okay,” Erik says and hangs up. 

He knows it’s an impossible promise but he intends to keep it all the same.


End file.
